Tag Archives: Space

NASA to Launch Guidelines to Protect Lunar Artifacts

NASA is unlikely to be the operator of the next spacecraft to land on the moon, but the U.S. space agency is considering sending along some red tape.

As dozens of private teams race to return to the moon as soon as next year, spurred on by $30 million in prize money from Google and the X Prize Foundation, NASA is wrestling with how to safeguard the historic and scientific value of more than three dozen sites containing remnants of America’s golden era of space exploration, including the spot where Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. left the first footprints on the lunar surface. Later this month, the agency plans to issue what it calls “recommendations” for spacecraft, or future astronauts, visiting U.S. government property on the moon. Continue reading NASA to Launch Guidelines to Protect Lunar Artifacts

Apollo Physicist Launches Noisy Dustup Over Old Moon Data

Whipping around the moon in the solar system’s loneliest spaceship, Apollo 8 astronaut James Lovell saw something in 1968 that he shouldn’t have: a gentle illumination, like a sunrise or sunset on Earth, hovered where the sun’s light cast its sharp shadow on the moon’s surface. Yet the moon has no atmosphere to catch the sun’s rays and create such a spectacle. Continue reading Apollo Physicist Launches Noisy Dustup Over Old Moon Data

Perseid meteors promise shower of science

Professional and amateur astronomers will be teaming up tonight to gather information about the origins and future of the Perseid meteor showers. The spectacle occurs every year when dust from a particular comet hits Earth’s atmosphere, visible as streaks of light shooting across the night sky.

Members of the International Meteor Organization (IMO), a group of amateur astronomers who are located around the world, will collect reports of meteor sightings made with the naked eye — aided by the new Moon, which will provide especially dark skies. The astronomers will collate their results using a standardized report form with details of timings, cloud cover and sky position, and the resulting global estimate of meteor distribution will complement the measurements of the professionals.

Read the rest of this news story on Nature News [html] or here [pdf]

Rocky hint of a waterless Moon

Another twist has emerged in the debate over whether there is water inside the Moon. Researchers studying lunar samples from the Apollo missions have used chlorine isotope measurements to conclude that the Moon is bone dry after all — corroborating scientists’ original assumptions from the 1970s, but contradicting more recent studies of the Moon’s water content.

Read the rest of this news story on Nature News [html] or here [pdf].